Nevada should enjoy below-normal wildfire threats

RENO, Nev. 
The snowiest winter in four years should help ease wildfire threats this summer across much of Nevada and the Sierra, federal experts say.

While parts of the Pacific Northwest are at significant risk of wildfire, the situation looks more favorable in western Nevada and most of the Sierra mountain range, according to the National Interagency Fire Center's annual report.

"Significant fire potential is expected to be below normal in most of Nevada," the agency said.

That's largely because the mountains west of Reno remain coated in white, thanks to the first winter since 2005-06 to deposit a snow pack at average or above-average levels, said Rick Ochoa, a meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Most of northeast Nevada and the Great Basin report a similar situation, as does the Sierra south of Lake Tahoe.

"We're going to be in a lot better shape than we have been there in a while," said Mark Struble, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Carson City. "Those big trees can soak up all that moisture."

Bob Sommer, fire management officer for Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said it's still a little early to gauge what's ahead for the fire season. May precipitation could be an important factor, he said.

"I don't see anything out of the normal suggesting a super high or super low danger," Sommer said.

No matter what the weather does, there's always danger of serious fires across the region, experts said. All it takes is for a fire to start at the wrong time, particularly in windy conditions.

That danger was clearly illustrated in June 2007, when winds whipped an abandoned campfire into an inferno at Lake Tahoe. The Angora Fire destroyed 254 homes in a single afternoon, remarkably with no loss of life.

Nevada experienced relatively little lightning the last several summers, resulting in moderate fire seasons such as last year, when 687 fires burned about 33,300 acres.

But that's not always the case. In June 2008, a swarm of lightning storms marched across Northern California, igniting a string of wildfires that burned more than 1 million acres.

In Nevada, much the same occurred in 1999, when an August barrage of dry lightning resulted in a record season that charred more than 1.6 million acres across the Silver State.

"That's everybody's big nightmare," Struble said. "Nobody has enough resources to jump on that when that happens."